Seeing the Bright Side – Time with Baby is the Biggest Gift – This Working Mom’s Perspective

The grass is greener… on my side.  Maybe you can’t tell from where you are standing, but it is. (And I dearly hope you feel the same way about your life.)
I got some good advice from people about getting the baby to go to sleep earlier, and I appreciate it. I’ll definitely be reading the suggested books. But what has bern best about these last few days is realizing how good I have it. I get six straight hours with my baby, and that’s what I want most.
Every mother’s situation is different. Every mother’s wants are different. Every mother is different.  As a working mom, things are different for me, but also they are different from other working mom’s because each person is different. (I wrote about this a few days ago, when talking about mother’s interpreting their child through the lens of their own personalities. )
My revelation came this way.
I went to bed at 11 the other night and the baby was still awake, I was sad that I’d hardly got to connect with her during the work week and had to go to bed and miss this time.  I checked my Facebook and saw on one of the mommy sites a lady I don’t know posting that she wanted to get her child to sleep earlier. She said she got him from daycare at 530, but after dinner and chores, couldn’t start the bedtime routine until 7 and he wasn’t falling asleep til 9, she wanted him to sleep by 8. Suddenly, I was grateful for baby’s current schedule. Sure, I want more than 6 hours, but 6 is so much better than 2 or 3. I would hate it if she slept at 830. I’d be missing everything.
Sure, I want her to go back to her 10 or 11 bedtime schedule, so I can put her to bed and her daddy and I can fully celebrate. 😉 But she didn’t wake up til 1130 this morning, so even though I work, I don’t miss that much. I can think of a million situations where I would also want my baby to sleep by 8, but none if those situations are my life.
I woke up at 1 am and fed her to put her to sleep, woke her at 8 am before work to feed her again and then only missed the 6 hours of her day before I got home.
Sure, I’m tired. I even took a 20 minute nap tonight, which I never do. But I’m not incoherent, because my husband stays up the latest with her. I still made major progress in my real work, the getting bad guys locked up work, rather than the speaking/meetings work.
So we’ll continue to get advise and try to figure out how to nudge her schedule forward a few hours. But I’m celebrating, because I’m not missing out on her life and that is the best gift I this mother could have.